Rising public safety costs covered by revenue surge

TEMECULA  Rising costs for police and fire service in Temecula will be covered by a surge in sales tax and property tax collections, according to the city's finance team.

As detailed by Interim City Manager Aaron Adams during a budget workshop Wednesday morning, the city is looking at spending around $60.1 million in the upcoming fiscal year that starts July 1 and taking in around $60.3 million.

That $60 million revenue figure is up from the $56 million the city is projecting to take in during this fiscal year.

The preliminary budget was assembled by a team that included Heidi Schrader, a senior management analyst who was named acting finance director after the firing of Bob Johnson and Genie Wilson.

Johnson, the former city manager, and Wilson, former chief financial officer, were fired in November.

Adams singled Schrader out for recognition during the workshop and praised her for her work during the transition.

"Heidi, thank you," he said.

The city recently hired a finance director who had worked in Chico, Jennifer Hennessy, and she is expected to take the city's budgetary reins moving forward.

As in previous years, about half of the city's expenditures, 48 percent, will go toward public safety and paying the contracts for service it negotiates with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and CalFire.

The contracts, Adams said, will allow the city to maintain a ratio of 1 officer per 1,000 residents and keep four firefighters assigned to emergency calls. To keep the police department ratio in line with the city's rising population, which was pegged at 104,879, the city is adding one patrol officer.

There also will be a Youth Accountability Team officer who will work with "troubled teens" at the city's school sites. The funding for that officer is covered by the county's Probation Department.

To help defray the rising costs for police service, Adams said the city negotiated a deal with the Temecula Valley Unified School District that will find the district picking up half of the $600,000 cost of the five police officers who work in district schools.

That entire total had been covered by the city since the 2009-10 fiscal year. Before that, the costs had been shared.

"I give them a lot of credit," Adams said after the workshop, adding that it's another example of the district partnering with the city for the benefit of residents.

Looking at other areas of the budget, the city plans to fill an assistant city manager position later this year, hire a full-time employee to run the history museum, another full-time employee to work on the city's special needs programs and boost the budget for the city clerk's office to handle public records requests.